Refuting globalism

Egalitarianism is the foundation of both liberalism and globalism. In fact, globalism was previously known by its true name of internationalism, a liberal policy.

Its goal is to ensure equality for all people worldwide by destroying barriers between them. On the positive side, that means no restrictions; on the negative, it means conformity and no uniqueness.

The goal is to make one-size-fits-all people who are like interchangeable parts, both predictable and non-essential, and to use their need to make a powerful moral state.

Much like the French Revolution, which dissolved when the revolutionaries ran out of innocent people to kill and began murdering each other, globalism has trouble when anyone disagrees.

It tends to wage war on them using its superior wealth, and justifying that war with its “moral” superiority, but to a distant observer, it would be seen as a form of conquest through uniformity.

In simpler terms, when the entire world are converted into the type of harmless opinionless people we find in our suburbs, we will finally feel safe. So we must destroy all values different from that ideal.

In the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Americans were mostly stunned. Up until that moment they were certain that every person in the world understands that they’re right, that their economy is better, that their constitution is fairer, and that their democracy is the only way to bring freedom to human beings. “Freedom itself was attacked,” their inarticulate president said.

They failed to grasp that not all people want freedom, that not all people want democracy, that not all people just want a nice car and a house to live in, and that not all people think that God is someone who invites you to a friendly meeting every Sunday before the barbeque. – Ynet

Yes, how could they turn on us? We are bringing them freedom, equality, justice, tolerance, diversity and a dozen other buzzwords that symbolize much but mean nothing.

What they see is us bringing Coca-Cola, high divorce rates, latchkey kids, a population that has to drink and rut like pigs to be “happy,” neurosis, public immorality, legal corruption, trash TV, McDonald’s, laws that penalize the innocent in favor of the victim, and other great injustices.

There may be no one-size-fits-all rule, because unlike what happens in the political concept of equality, in life there is no equality. First, there’s no linear standard; second, even within that, people have different needs based on their abilities and inclinations.

Egalitarianism in other words may be an error on a practical level, although on an ideological (really, “social,” since the goal of ideology is to convince others to deny reality in favor of a preferential vision) level it is pure brilliance.

It may also be the death of us. Like Rome in the late stages of Empire, we seem to have lots of power, but not much actual joy in life. We define “happy” as distracted and not miserable on the surface, but the continuing weirdness and dysfunction of people who should know better suggests this first-world population is anything but “happy.”

But we’re afraid to give it.

Like many things in life, egalitarianism is one extreme of a spectrum that tends between two such extremes. Namely: the everyone-is-equal crowd versus those who insist on some kind of hierarchy, where some outperform others.

Mr Cameron also warned that parents of youngsters who play truant face having their benefits cuts.

He pledged to bring ‘rigour’ back into Britain’s classrooms and condemned Labour’s ‘prizes for all’ culture, which frowns on competitiveness.

Mr Cameron is under increasing pressure to reassure Tory MPs and voters that the Coalition is in touch with middle-class anxieties.

His speech was seen as a deliberate contrast to pledges by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to drive up standards in poorer areas.- Daily Mail

The divide is clearly spelled out: equality for everyone, which means focus on those who aren’t up to par, or competitiveness designed to produce those who are above par.

People demand equality out of fear. They fear that they won’t measure up. As a result, their fear trumps their desire for achievement, and they demand to be released of their fear.

They hide this behind fancy language, but the question they are ultimately asking is: “Do you want your child to be guaranteed a prize at the science fair, or do you want your kid to get a big prize if they do much better than average?”

This is the age-old conflict of societies. On the level of socialization, of course the correct answer is that everyone is equal, and everyone is included. That will make you popular.

On the level of the inner self and the intelligence of our best people, that is insane. To make everyone equal destroys our ability to keep evolving by providing rewards for sanity and disincentives for insanity.

Competition however only rewards some and makes the vast majority feel average. Then again, removing competition makes them think they are capable of roles for which they are clearly incompetent.

These two sides — egalitarianism versus Social Darwinism — constitute the essence of the left/right divide, which contrary to trends, is more real than people believe.

You either want equality or competition (which leads to quality). There is no middle ground.

Globalism is the notion that by mating liberal internationalism with another form of anarchy, consumerism, we can make a perfect society that no one will refuse. September 11, 2001 showed us that globalism is in fact in error: not everyone wants part of this happy world, not even the “happy” people living in it.

But because globalism claims to be moral, and construes itself as a rebellion, it is the “invisible politic” which cannot be rebelled against or debunked, since in its anarchistic state it accepts all viewpoints. That is why globalism is powerful, and why commerce clings to it: it cannot be overthrown.

And globalism offers you a certain kind of freedom. There can be no standards, because that creates hierarchy. Thus you get a society that’s essentially anarchy with a few political taboos and bans on obviously destructive behavior (murder, meth, rape, etc).

Yet there may be another kind of freedom which lurks outside of one-size-fits-all. It’s not the freedom from the fear of being average, but the freedom to be above average, or just to take a different path:

Until very recently, the centralization of administrative power under expert control — what we might call, for shorthand, rational planning — was considered essential to public policy solutions. In the industrial and post-industrial eras, advances in science and technology seemed to promise a future of unprecedented efficiency. Centralized programs could coordinate masses of people toward desired goals, in areas from government to business to philanthropy to city planning. Modern policy problems were considered to be, fundamentally, systemic issues too complex for local citizens and requiring expert professional attention. Technology and globalization would only increase the value of this approach.

Now, however, trends have begun to shift in a very different direction. Some of the preeminent projects of rational planning are foundering or altogether failing. The entitlement crisis, the housing bubble, and other prominent stories and scandals have made Americans more skeptical of distant experts. Advances in technology and business have created new possibilities for individual and local empowerment. The pressure is on for products, services, and organizational practices that will enable consumers and participants to solve problems themselves.

By contrast, rational planning viewed human beings mainly in the aggregate, essentially as a collection of data points that could be predicted and manipulated based on such categorical differences as race and gender. The messy web of mediating institutions — families, churches, nonprofits — could be sidestepped. Mass programs, which could operate on a scale impossible in the pre-industrial age, would be able to deal directly with the masses, matching problems with solutions and products with demand. Freed from the complex and sometimes onerous network of relationships formerly required for political life, Americans would interact directly with the powerhouses of finance and planning: the government, major corporations, big foundations, and so on. – The New Atlantis

Rational planning is the one-size-fits-all approach; it denies the organic hierarchy of humanity, and the web of culture, beliefs, values and informal institutions that it creates.

Instead of trying to create an ideal based on egalitarianism, we could swing to the other side and allow hierarchy — including the ability for local communities to do things differently.

For example, if New York wants to be multicultural/cosmopolitan/diverse, that’s fine. If Heidelberg doesn’t, that’s also fine. No one-size-fits-all in the name of making the world safe for egalitarianism.

Throughout all of this, we have to remember that egalitarianism was not a goal but a device and a justification used during the French Revolution. When you want to kill a king, you need a good reason. Preferably one that fools millions of proles into thinking it’s a complex moral theory that, by virtue of being complex and reductive, is the only correct path.

Those ancient justifications are now causing us endless problems:

Liberal ideas were developed in the good old days when landowners, slave owners, and business owners were the bad guys. So liberals developed the notions of protest, civil disobedience, and passive resistance as the means by which the oppressed, assisted by their educated allies, could register their protest against injustice, expose the hypocrisies of the powerful, and win through to a just society.

But now a new justice movement has emerged onto the political radar. Only this time it is not a liberal movement, enthusiastically supported by our liberal friends. Instead this movement, the Tea Party movement, is anti-liberal. It has arisen to oppose the injustices of liberalism.

As you might expect, our liberal friends are not reacting very well. Protest, civil disobedience, mass meetings are one thing when they are used for a progressive purpose. When used by conservatives–even conservative religious women–liberals talk of “incivility”, of “terrorism”, of racism, and worse. – CAA

I post these disparate quotations to show that what we say here at Amerika.org is not that far from the mainstream; we’ve just connected a few more dots.

Connecting dots is how civilization is built. Computer code is based on libraries, laws are based on previous legal cases, customs are based on what worked in the past.

We are entering a time of vast change when we cast off the obsolete liberal demand for egalitarianism, which has brought us nothing but grief, and instead focus on reality and competence again.

This angers those who benefit from globalism, mainly international business (regulation legalizes all behavior except that which is banned), and the lynch mob of miserable people who want to tear down others and make them miserable too, preferably through some unassailable idea like morality.

But aren’t we tired of a past that reveals an unmitigated slow decline, and ready for health again? Illness is so boring.

by Brett Stevens on September 23, 2011
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12 Responses to “Refuting globalism”

“Competition however only rewards some and makes the vast majority feel average.”

Competition rewards everyone by giving them an accurate sense of where they stand, and so when they are free of these silly dreams that they can become aeronautical engineers, they can pursue other interests more in tune with their nature.

I think the average man, if asked which he would prefer, would prefer the competition, he is happier with a defined role and a clear purpose in life, a life that isn’t muddied by inane fairy tales and bloated self-value.

The average fella, I think, on his own terms, would not be chopping at the bit to destroy the competent. He is artifically inflated by some external buttress and so he sulks in self pity when his real experience doesn’t match up with the artificial expectation.

“I have an old, yellowed editorial from the July 1955 issue of the magazine The Point. It is titled ‘Should Hate Be Outlawed?’ In it an unusually bold … editor, Leonard Feeney, is still taking issue with the … campaign at that time to stamp out fascism by outlawing ‘hate’–a campaign, he notes, which has been pushed hard by them since 1940. At least, 1940 is when the ‘anti-fascist’ campaign became noticeable to Feeney. He writes:

“‘On billboards, on bus and subway posters, in newspapers and magazines, through radio and television broadcasts, Americans are being assured and reassured, both subtly and boldly, that ‘Bigotry is fascism . . . Only Brotherhood can save our nation . . . We must be tolerant of all!’

“The editor continues–and remember, this was written 44 years ago:

“‘The long-range effects of this [anti-fascist propaganda] campaign are even now evident. It is producing the ‘spineless citizen’: the man who has no cultural sensibilities; who is incapable of indignation; whose sole mental activity is merely an extension of what he reads in the newspaper or sees on the television screen; who faces moral disaster in his neighborhood, political disaster in his country, and an impending world catastrophe with a blank and smiling countenance. He has only understanding for the enemies of his country. He has nothing but kind sentiments for those who would destroy his home and family. He has an earnest sympathy for anyone who would obliterate his faith. He is universally tolerant. He is totally unprejudiced. If he has any principles, he keeps them well concealed, lest in advertising them he should seem to indicate that contrary principles might be inferior. He is, to the extent of his abilities, exactly like the next citizen, who, he trusts, is trying to be exactly like him: a faceless, characterless putty-man.’”

It took me a long time to explain, even to my wife, that not all people have the same goals. And that none can be made to see what they are unable to see, or think, or believe.
A Jihadist isn’t interested in a comfortable, secure, suburban lifestyle where nobody blows anyone up.
A commuter isn’t interested in sacrificing his life to a God he doesn’t feel connected to.
The best anyone can do is to try to be as responsible as one can, for whatever it is that one does. To do one’s best, according to whatever moral code one has.
And accept the fact that everybody else, and whatever their behaviour may be, is beyond one’s control.

So what are you getting at? You point out that fact that not everyone wants to [insert reasonable goal, such as “not blowing up children waiting for the bus”], as though this is noteworthy or something that should give pause to those who wouldn’t, for example, endorse “blowing up kids waiting for the bus” as a reasonable goal in life. In short, you seem to imply that US goals and pursuits have no better standing in the world than anyone else’s, including the 9/11 hijackers. Actually, you seem to take it a step further and suggest that American pursuits directly contributed to the events of 9/11.

Let’s use medicine to think about this reasoning a little differently. What if, whhen asked about wanting to live a life free from disease and chronic illness, someone said, “I’m not interested in living a life free of cancer, heart failure, and chronic disease.” Are we obliged to respect this as a reasonable alternative lifestyle? Not a chance. Does this person’s view on health give us pause with regard to our own beliefs about living a life free of cancer, heart failure, and chronic disease? Again, not a fuckin’ chance. We easily write this person off as crackpot and hopefully get him a mental health case manager (and a physician). Why can we not do this with respect to cultural or moral pursuits? While there may be a number of different, but equally healthy cultural and economic pursuits, there will certainly be many more horrible pursuits.

“September 11, 2001 showed us that globalism is in fact in error: not everyone wants part of this happy world, not even the “happy” people living in it.” Here you go again, seeming to imply that because a group of people felt marginalized with their bronze aged beliefs, it demonstrates that American global pursuits are wrong. Perhaps American global pursuits are flawed, but the 9/11 horrors demonstrate very little other than what people are capable of when their brains are running on crackpot religious software. So to me, your logical here seems quite flawed. I’m not a philosophy major, but to me it almost sounds like a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Trying to tie the events of 9/11 to some larger and more sinister consumerism/globalism phenomena does nothing but obfuscate the “reality”, which is that a handful of reasonabley educated men killed themselves and thousands of other people in the name of Allah.

[quote] Let’s use medicine to think about this reasoning a little differently. What if, whhen asked about wanting to live a life free from disease and chronic illness, someone said, “I’m not interested in living a life free of cancer, heart failure, and chronic disease.” Are we obliged to respect this as a reasonable alternative lifestyle? Not a chance. Does this person’s view on health give us pause with regard to our own beliefs about living a life free of cancer, heart failure, and chronic disease? Again, not a fuckin’ chance. We easily write this person off as crackpot and hopefully get him a mental health case manager (and a physician). Why can we not do this with respect to cultural or moral pursuits? While there may be a number of different, but equally healthy cultural and economic pursuits, there will certainly be many more horrible pursuits.[/quote]

Sure, he’s a crackpot and insane [italics] under your societal rules or moral code [/italics]. If you interact with him on the local scale, by following your suggestion, you are saying “this kind of behavior is not tolerated in my society”, which is what everyone here is already saying.

Your error arises when you seek to impose this on a universal scale, which is exactly what this article is about…It’s only a problem that “a handful of reasonabley educated men killed themselves and thousands of other people in the name of Allah” [italics] because [/italics] of globalism…these people would be nowhere near the US were it not for your willingness to do exactly what Brett is pointing out in this article…embrace globalism. (Embracing globalism includes establishing a cultural and economic presence in countries where some parts of the population will oppose it by violent means if necessary…not to mention relaxing immigration laws to the point of absurdity)

I see what you’re saying, but I’m not sure I can accept it wholesale. So, you would agree that the bombing of school children and any possible permutation of this kind of horror is universily unaccepable? How then do you explain your next point, which seems to be that the US should only manage this sort of depraved murdurous behavior within the its own boarders. Are you saying that at some point there is a breakdown in your ability to empathize? You seem to suggest that your concern is not whether or not people are being tortured or murdered by the thousands, but how close in proximity it might be happening to you. Are you okay with this sort of moral reasoning? If this is not what you’re saying, I’m having some problems following your logic. If this is another veiled attempt to suggest that the US precipitates this sort of depraved murderous behavior, please read my last post.

I also don’t understand what you mean by, “under your” societal rules and moral code? This seems to open up the possibility that there are other legitimate moral codes or societal rules that include pursuing chronic disease and rape as reasonable goals. If this is not the case, then way emphesis “your”?

How egotistical does one need to be, to feel such concern for events far, far, beyond one’s horizon?
It is the nearby event that warrants consideration.
There are others, far, far away that must consider events nearby to them.
One is never so vitally important that far-off events need their concern.
Such lofty-minded people are inevitably unable to get along with the trivial, unimportant things, like their neighbours.
Oops: a bit of sarcasm maybe. Sorry about that.

When you try to hold everyone accountable to one moral, ethical, or cultural order, you run into problems when it gets down to the nitty-gritty: who gets to decide which code/rules are chosen, and how to apply them? Remember this is on the global scale and affects billions. And this is only looking (directly) l at the human factor.

We chose extreme examples and that’s all well and good, but at the end of the day it’s hardly ever as easy as “serial killers are bad man…”. Any tribe or nation which wants to survive past its first year will realize that burning its babies alive will not end well. Once the only true ‘universals’ are out of the way (and really, some tribes have been practicing, for example, cannibalism, for centuries, so…) there is no possible way that massively different groups of people can come to a consensus about anything besides the lowest common denominator. Further, trying to impose some sort of universal set of rules on the whole of humanity is, frankly, insane, and also, not likely to end well.

Whether I “empathize” with millions of strangers being killed in a far-off land is irrelevant…a more pertinent question, as crow pointed out, is this: is it not an indication of the gigantic size of my ego that I would [bold] assume [/bold] my moral code is superior to that of a ruler in a far-off land killing millions, for whatever reason? What if they were all rapists?

And the use of “my”, “our”, “your” etc is entirely intentional…whether we use extreme examples are not, there are major differences in the belief systems of people. Whether they are “legitimate” or not is simply [bold] another [/bold] moral judgement which you make. The test of reality is the only test. If society X kills all its babies and has no outside influence, they will be wiped out. No moral judgements. No “the helpless children, o no…” Just reality. This applies to this simple example and any number of more complex examples we can think of. That is what I am trying to say. Globalism, in its current form, does not work. Adapting to reality does. That adaptation, [bold] not reality itself[/bold] will be different for different groupings of people.

And quit the “America played no part in 9/11” garbage…read some history about US involvement in Middle East affairs, please…

Al Qaeda did not attack us because of McDonalds or whatnot. They rather explicitly stated their strategic goals and demands related to American foreign policy. You are right though that not all people desire the same thing, not even all Americans.